


five times richie tozier broke his own heart (and one time he didn’t)

by richiesspaghetti



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Childhood Friends, Closeted, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Kinda, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot Collection, Self-Denial, Slow Burn, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richiesspaghetti/pseuds/richiesspaghetti
Summary: series of 1k drabbles. childhood friends to lovers. timeline is congruent with the 2017 movie but is probably kinda fucked up.





	1. December 1992

Eddie stared in horror at the television, watching the ticker-tape scroll silently past as the news anchors joked and laughed with each other about the fast-approaching Christmas.

_Floridian Fifteen-year-old Ricky Ray Confirmed Deceased From AIDs-Related Complications._

His hands trembled, his breathing growing uneven and rapid. His eyes unfocused. He did what he always did when the familiar panic set in: he called Richie. Unplugging the phone from its jack in the kitchen and sneaking upstairs past Sonia, Eddie quickly dialed the number he had had memorized since the very first school year he’d shared with Richie. Nervous energy consuming his body, he paced up and down the length of his bedroom, as far as the cord would reach.

“Hey, Eds, what’s --”

“Richie I’m gonna die,” Eddie gasped when he heard the other end pick up. He was in his room, sitting with his legs dangling from the windowsill. Ms. K still slept soundly, snoring loudly. Eddie still kept his door closed, just in case. He’d surely lose his life if she knew he’d stolen the phone.

“Hey, shh, hey, talk to me,” Richie cooed from the other end, no stranger to these episodes but worried out of his mind nonetheless. “Deep breaths, Eddie, just like I showed you.” Richie, conversely, sat at the island in his kitchen, a spoon still immersed in his bowl of Cheerios. Sure, it was nearing 10pm, but Richie had never been one for smart decisions. The TV played some boring spaghetti western from the living room, Mr. Tozier too engrossed on the lack of plot to pay any attention to Richie’s conversation.

Eddie gulped in a huge breath of cool night air, closing his eyes and letting the sound of Richie’s voice on the other end surround him, enveloping him like a child’s blanket.

“Is everything okay?” Richie asked after a beat, knowing that the likelihood of Eddie being in any real danger was slim to none. Of course, if something really felt wrong, he’d have run the four blocks to Eddie’s house by now.

Whether it was a symptom of the panic attack or simply because of Richie’s question, tears immediately welled in his eyes and spilled over Eddie’s cheeks. The heat of emotion flushed his face a slight pink, his breathing shallow and uneven. His mind rushed at 100 miles an hour, leaping from horrific thought to horrific thought, the idea of himself wasting away to nothing in a hospital bed clouding each one.

“I - I saw on the news,” he half-sobbed, trying to keep it together, “that a kid died from AIDS, Richie. He was barely younger than us.” He was fully crying now, unable to mask the emotion in his voice. “He died from AIDS. It’s not just Freddie Mercury anymore, Rich.” A broken sob reached through to Richie’s end of the line.

Richie was quiet for a moment. “Eddie, I’ll be over there in ten minutes.” As he promised this, he poured out his bowl of cereal and tugged on the ratty old pair of Converse by the door. The laces were still untied when he reached his car.

Eddie sniffled. “I’m upstairs. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.” He didn’t want to hang up first, to be separated from Richie for any longer stretch of time than he had to.

After the line had silenced, Eddie crept back downstairs and unlocked the backdoor, just as he said he would. Carefully he plugged the phone back into the wall behind the kitchen counter, heading back into his room once everything was back in place. He crawled into his bed, covers pulled up to his chin, and waited for the sound of Richie ascending the stairs.

“Eddie?” Richie’s voice was a quiet whisper, but it filled Eddie with unparalleled relief.

“I’m here,” Eddie replied, looking up at Richie in the doorway of his bedroom. His big brown eyes were filled with sadness, with fear and anxiety. Richie knew exactly how that look conveyed so much more than what it seemed.

“I should get an Olympic medal for the number of times I’ve snuck past your mom while she’s sleeping. You’re lucky her snores drown out the sound of my sneakers,” Richie joked, and Eddie laughed, a broken and still slightly panicked sound.

“More like my mom deserves an Olympic medal for sleeping so hard,” he said, pulling back the covers on his bed and inviting Richie in. “Take your shoes off first, you cretin,” he warned him, and Richie gave him that trademarked look of disbelief. Richie was just glad to see Eddie back in his usual spirits, even if only halfway.

“How dare I enter the bed of Sir Edward Kaspbrak with my peasants’ shoes? Do you take me for some type of simpleton?” He put on his faux posh accent, the one Eddie loved to loathe.

Richie toed off his shoes and climbed into bed next to his best friend, a smile that lingered somewhere between adoration and satisfaction on his face as Eddie laughed. He wasn’t sure what it was about him that calmed Eddie, but he knew it was different than what Stan, or Bill, or Mike, or Ben, or even Beverly could manage.

After a moment they both grew quiet. The stillness of the moment hung in the air like pregnant rainclouds.

After a moment Eddie spoke again. “Richie… I’m really scared. I’m scared I’ll die too.” His voice was hushed, holding back the same emotion that had been present on the phone call.

Richie sighed and took Eddie’s hand in his. He wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but this weighed more heavily on his chest than anything else in the world. Eddie didn’t deserve to be so scared of dying like this. _For fuck’s sake,_ Richie thought to himself, _he’s already looked death in the face and won once before._ What had happened those few summers ago was something he never wanted to talk about again, especially not to Eddie. He would always have the scars on his arm to remind him, anyway, and he didn’t need Richie’s words to do it any further.

“You’re not gonna die, Eds. Not if I can help it.”

“I thought I told you not to call me that,” Eddie groaned.

“You did. But when have I ever listened to anything?”

This earned Richie a well-deserved punch in the shoulder.

“Hold on, hold on. Amendment. You’re not gonna die from anything but _me_.” Anything Richie could say now would be nothing but a balm to Eddie’s wounds, an escape from the very real horrors of the real world — and none of them to do with clowns in the sewer.

It was then that Richie, in all his juvenile glee, pounced on Eddie, tickling his ribs.

“Richie!” Eddie gasped, trying not to laugh and wake his mother. “My mom’s asleep!”

“Oh, want me to go get her? I’m sure she’d love to jump in.”

“I’m gonna murder you.”


	2. July 1993

_Some things are better left unsaid._

That’s what Richie Tozier told himself as Eddie Kaspbrak laid with his head in his lap on the long drive home from their summer trip. It was dark out, and the clock radio announced in bright green block numbers that it was nearing 3am. There were no other cars on this road; it was just him and Eddie, as he felt it should be.

It had taken lots of careful convincing for Richie to get Eddie to agree to this trip. He’d never really left home for more than a few days, and even then he’d never gone this far out. He knew Sonia was at home in her easy chair, hand on the landline phone, Fox News droning in the background, three seconds away from filing a missing persons report at any moment. It’s not that he didn’t want to leave (god, he so desperately wanted to leave); it was that he didn’t want to deal with the consequences of leaving.

_C’mon, Eds, let’s go for just a week. Once I leave for college you’ll never see me again!_

(Perhaps Richie’s wording here teetered on the hyperbolic.)

_I told you not to call me that._

(Eddie, headstrong, had never and would never stop reminding Richie of this fact.)

It was just the pair of them, holed up in Richie’s great-aunt’s lakeside cabin for seven days and seven nights. It was a quiet, nearly unpopulated area, somewhere that held many bittersweet memories for Richie. It was the most perfect place he could imagine to spend a week with someone like Eddie.

As far as semantics go, Richie had somehow managed to convince his dad to sell him the family car with money he’d saved up from working summers at Freeze’s. Disappearing for a week was the easy part.

Eddie, on the other hand, had spent the better half of senior year begging his mother to let him go just this once without her breathing down his neck. Ever since that one fateful summer, when he confronted her about the gazebos, she’d been reluctant to let Eddie out of her sight -- out of fear that he’d grow up even more or simply run away was the question of the decade. But the day Eddie turned 18, he’d had enough. He was decidedly a child no longer. Secretly, he’d been saving up for an apartment, hoping that one day he would free himself from her. He’d already applied to every college in Maine, hoping to coast on whatever scholarship money he could garner. One week of the summer was a trial run to him, or rather, an act of defiance. He was simultaneously thrilled to be on his own for a week and anxious as all hell to see what this would manifest back in real life.

Eddie stirred in Richie’s lap, his heavy-lidded eyes slipping open for a second, peering into Richie’s own, before closing again under their own weight. A look of something between love and longing settled over his gentle features as his body lulled back into a deep, hypnotic sleep. Richie looked down at the boy he loved so dearly and so silently. He swallowed hard, and looked back at the road.

This week-long excursion has revealed more to Richie than he had ever anticipated. Each late night spent in the kitchen cooking whatever the tiny hole-in-the-wall grocery store had enabled them to, each afternoon spent skinny dipping in the lake, each morning spent waking up with Eddie across the room — all of it made Richie’s heart ache so deeply the thought it might burst.

How he managed to spent the last fifteen years completely oblivious to what was now so painfully obvious, he didn’t know. All he knew was that they were on borrowed time now; Richie would be moving cross-country in a matter of weeks to study engineering at some stuffy California college, and Eddie wouldn’t be following him for the first time in living memory. Truly, he didn’t know if he would make it without Eddie by his side.

Eddie drew in a shaky breath as he slept, something Richie had grown to notice — if it was something going on in a dream or due to the years of living with Sonia, he couldn’t tell. But it made him irrationally nervous every single time, as if the next time it happened Eddie wouldn’t take in another. One hand dropped from the steering wheel, finding itself tenderly entangled in Eddie’s short dark hair, brushing it away from his face. He could have sworn Eddie smiled.

It killed him that he couldn’t say it. It ate away at every fiber of his being that no matter what happened, Richie couldn't bring himself to tell Eddie the truth out of the paralyzing fear that for some strange reason Eddie wouldn’t feel the same. It’s not that Richie explicitly thought this was true; it was because there were years of friendship, of best friendship, beneath them. He felt like saying something so vulnerable would split the ground beneath them. Knowing he had the capability to love someone like Eddie wasn’t the hard part; it was the _action_ of loving Eddie that filled him with such an intense anxiety that the words stuck in his throat when he gathered the courage to speak.

There was, however, one instance where Richie’s words bubbled against his lips and nearly tumbled out completely: they had been lying on the docks, both of them pointing out which stars shone the brightest and which constellations they recognized (Eddie knew many of them by name while Richie preferred to entertain with observations of which clusters looked rather phallic or resembled Eddie’s mother). Eddie had said something that Richie would never forget: _Do you think they know how beautiful they are?_ Richie’s smart mouth wanted to fire back a simple: _Do you?_

One day, he thought, One day I’ll tell him.

Every single star was out that night.


	3. August 1994

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied. this one’s 2k.

Richie couldn’t believe what Eddie had just told him.

“You’re telling me you’ve never snuck into any bars? Do you even have a fake ID?”

Eddie rolled his eyes and sat up from his previous upside down position over the side of Richie’s bed. It was an unusually sweltering August afternoon in Maine, and soft dusky sunlight filtered through Richie’s yellowed lace curtains. Richie pretended not to notice the way they cast floral-shaped patterns across Eddie’s face, perfectly illuminating his deep brown eyes and framing the delicate curves and lines.

“No, dumbass, some of us have brain cells,” he replied, the coloring from his Dreamsicle turning his lips orange.

“Aw, shit, really? I think I lost the last of mine last semester. Ya see, this sorority girl-“

“Stop, stop, stop, I don’t wanna hear about your STDs,” Eddie halted him, shaking his head and stifling a laugh. “Where do you even get a fake ID in Derry?”

“In Derry? Nowhere,” Richie laughed, biting into his ice cream like the sociopath Eddie knew and loved. “But if we drive 15 minutes out…” He wiggled his eyebrows over the frames of his thick glasses. “Whaddaya say, Eds? Down to clown tonight?”

“Why would I need a fake ID when I’m 19?” Eddie asked dryly, flipping through a comic book he couldn’t be less interested in.

“To _get trashed_, Eddie Spaghetti.” Richie’s magnified eyes rolled hard (even after all these years he’d never bothered with new frames), snatching the comic book from Eddie’s hands. “I’ve got this real cool comic back in my dorm, it’s called Playboy and all the superheroes have HUGE ti-“

“RICHIE.” Eddie shot Richie a look of pure bewilderment. He couldn’t hide his amusement, however, and Richie knew.

“What? I read ‘em for the articles.”

Eddie groaned. “Spiderman’s cooler than boobs anyway.” Eddie finished off his Dreamsicle and snapped the stick in half, throwing the saliva-coated end at Richie. “Unless they’re your mom’s.”

Richie took this as a yes, and after some fighting to get the last word, he and Eddie climbed into the old beat-up station wagon and drove to Augusta. Eddie came back with a falsified identity, and Richie came back with a plan.

“We’re gonna get caught. We’re gonna get caught and I’m gonna die,” Eddie fretted, his voice matter-of-fact and succinct but speaking all too quickly. Richie placed a hand on Eddie’s knee, a gesture that brought his hyperventilation to a halt for a completely different kind of anxiety.

“And what? I won’t die?” Richie’s lips quirked into a half-grin, partially because he knew exactly how to make Eddie shut up, and partially because he couldn’t imagine a world without Eddie. The latter thought, however, was compartmentalized and saved for another day.

“You never do,” Eddie replied, half-pouting. For once, the trashmouth didn’t bother with replying.

Richie kept his hand on Eddie’s knee for the rest of the drive, the roads illuminated only by headlights and the few and far between streetlights.

Surprisingly, they didn’t die, and thanks to Eddie’s strange and often useless knowledge of all zip codes in America, the bouncer obliged them into Derry’s only relatively popular club scene.

“Ya see, Eds? We’re alive,” Richie poked once they’d gotten out of earshot of the bouncer. “And ain’t it beautiful.” Richie beelined to the bar, fluently ordering two drinks Eddie had never heard of. They were colorful, and fruity, and Eddie winced at the first sip.

“It’s _sangria_, Eddie, jeezus,” Richie teased, taking the biggest drink that Eddie had ever seen a human person drink. “The faster you drink it the faster it works,” Richie explained, despite never having been asked. “It’s like shots.”

Eddie quirked an eyebrow and sipped anxiously through the thin black stirring straw. “You are not getting me drunk,” he said confidently, the slight edge of a threat in his words.

“Yeah, yeah, wait til we get to the hard stuff,” Richie replied, finishing his drink and setting the glass on the sticky counter. The club was more or less dead, which was to be expected on a Sunday night. But if Eddie didn’t experience this now, with him, he never would -- this being Richie’s impatient 19 year old logic.

It took Eddie all of twenty minutes to finish the first sangria, but the second rum and coke was gone in five, and the third vodka cranberry was gone as soon as the glass hit his lips. Once the initial buzz had set in, Eddie was fearless and insatiable, and soon he was further gone than even Richie. He blamed it all on Richie’s tolerance, but it didn’t help that this club was playing all the right music. Drunk Eddie, he came to realize, loved to dance to Whitney Huston.

Tipsy Richie loved to watch him dance, completely out of time and full of nothing but rampant joy. They spun each other in circles, giggling and holding onto each other like there was no one else in that club but them. Each pair of eyes they caught staring was met with Richie’s signature wit, a cat-call of _“Wanna join in?”_ followed by a chorus of laughter in two voices. There was no insecurity, no worry, no second thoughts; Eddie was free, and Richie was free, and they were happy in each other’s company like they were kids again with no fear for the future or for themselves.

When Richie had sobered up enough to drive, and when he realized Eddie was entering the stage of drunkenness where sleep is on the forefront of the brain, he gently took Eddie’s hand and led him back to the station wagon.

“Eddie Kaspbrak, king of the drunks,” Richie joked, opening the passenger side door and gingerly guiding Eddie inside with a hand on his back.

“If I’m the king, you’re the queen,” Eddie half-slurred, mostly from sleep but significantly impacted with alcohol. “Like the David Bowie song,” he mumbled as Richie fastened his seatbelt. “Love you, Rich.”

Richie’s heart constricted in his chest. He took in a breath and bit down his expression, although he knew Eddie couldn’t read it, and replied with an equally short, “Love ya too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Richie, in the dark of the night, could hardly see ten feet in front of him. He turned on the low beams of the old clunker, started the car, and drove on to his house. It was quiet, each of them thinking fondly of the other.

“Hey, Richie?” Eddie’s voice was small, quiet, and his words carried not forethought.

“Yeah?”

“You mean a lot to me.” Eddie looked up at Richie with tenderness and sincerity in his eyes. “A whole bunch.”

“You mean a whole bunch to me too, Eds.” Richie reached over and squeezed Eddie’s hand in his. “I’m taking you back to my house, okay?”

“Okay.” Eddie stared down at their hands. “Don’t ever wanna go home. Mom still treats me like I’m 14.” He rolled his head against the seat towards Richie. “Let’s run away. I’ll go with you back to college.” He spoke with a dopey smile on his lips, his eyes twinkling in the streetlights.

“You’re so drunk,” Richie laughed, pretending Eddie’s words weren’t filling him with longing. “I’ll shove you in my suitcase and smuggle you into the dorms.”

A sadness crossed Eddie’s face, his eyes dropping to the floor. “Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I wish we had more than just the summer, y’know,” he continued, the words tumbling from his mouth. Not that he cared, anyway. “I wish I really did just run away. She’d’ve called the cops on me, though. Surprised she let me sleep over tonight.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Richie replied, the sadness transferring from Eddie to himself like cheap dye on fabric.

When they arrived back at Richie’s house, the porch light still illuminating the peeling paint of the patio, Eddie had sobered up just enough to be cognizant. They stepped out of the car, their hands finding their way to each other once again as they climbed the few stairs of the walkway.

“I had fun tonight,” Eddie said, peering up into Richie’s eyes. He’d grown considerably in the last five years, leaving Eddie behind at an impressive 5’9”. “I wouldn’t have gone without you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a god of persuasion,” Richie replied, shoving the key into the lock and letting them both in. “I’m gonna get you some water so you don’t die tomorrow morning,” he added, making his way into the kitchen. “And a sandwich. Have you eaten today?”

The question was simple, but Eddie was still too drunk to see anything about Richie that wasn’t outlined in a certain tenderness. “Not really. Just that Dreamsicle before we left,” he revealed.

Richie grabbed a glass from the cabinets and filled it from the tap, handing it to Eddie. Eddie gratefully accepted, sitting on the floor and watching as Richie grabbed the bread from the breadbox.

“I think my parents went out to Portland,” Richie observed. “They only leave the porch light on when nobody’s home.” He grabbed a jar of peanut butter and a case knife. “Maybe they got a hotel room. Ugh, never mind, I don’t wanna imagine my parents shacking up.”

Eddie giggled. “I don’t gotta imagine it,” he said. “Not your mom, anyway.”

“Good to hear you’re halfway sober,” Richie shot back, smearing the peanut butter onto the bread. Eddie finished his glass of water and attempted to stand up, catching himself on the edge of the counter before falling. “Maybe not,” Richie added, taking the glass from Eddie and filling it up. “Stay on the floor so you don’t spill your brains on my mom’s laminate,” he advised, going to the fridge and hunting down the grape jelly. He scooped out a good-sized glob of it with the knife, which he had haphazardly wiped clean with a dishcloth.

“Won’t be the first bodily fluid of mine on this floor,” Eddie mumbled, crossing his legs beneath him. Richie turned around, knife still in hand.

“And it won’t be the last,” he threatened, brandishing the silverware, “if you don’t shut up.”

“Make me.” Eddie stuck out his tongue.

Richie cocked an eyebrow and, for once, held his tongue. He finished their sandwiches and stacked them on a paper plate, holding out his free hand to Eddie.

“C’mon, Captain Morgan.”

Eddie gratefully took Richie’s hand and followed him up the stairs, wanting nothing more than to crawl into Richie’s bed and sleep for ten years. The room was exactly how they’d left it, but somehow it was more inviting to Eddie. It was a piece of Richie, after all. Even the posters for bands Eddie had never gotten into seemed like the most beautiful art in the world because it meant something to Richie.

They settled in beside each other, sitting cross legged on the bed. Richie took his sandwich and handed the plate to Eddie. Somehow, still, nothing looked more appealing in this moment to him than the floppy-haired boy in oversized glasses. Richie obliviously took a bite from his pb&j.

“If you’re hungover tomorrow don’t even think about going home,” Richie said, speaking through a mouth mostly full. He really never shut up. “If your mom calls I’ll tell her you fell into the quarry.”

“That’s if she doesn’t file a missing persons case against me before then,” Eddie mused, picking at the crusts of his sandwich.

“Would that make me a hostage?”

“Dumbass. I’d be the hostage.”

“Shut up, you know I failed English in 10th grade.”

“Yeah, I know, your mom made me tutor you for three semesters.”

Richie snorted. “And I _still_ made a D.”

In a moment of spontaneity, Eddie leaned forward and kissed Richie. It surprised them both, but neither pulled away; in fact, Richie leaned in, too, his hand gently placed on the side of Eddie’s neck. His mouth tasted of peanut butter and rum, childhood familiarity and belonging.

Richie, his heart breaking, knew this would be something they’d never speak of again.


	4. November 1995

Freedom, to Eddie, took shape in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in downtown Augusta. And after months of never spending a single dime out of the paycheck from his first and only job, freedom was his, rented for $450 a month.

Richie was there, of course, to help him move in. Not that Eddie needed the help; all he had to his name was the small twin-sized bed he’d kept since childhood and several hundreds of books that he’d read several hundreds of times.

_”Casa de Kaspbrak,”_ Richie announced proudly upon entering the sparse little world that now belonged to Eddie. “How’s it feel to be a grown-up, Eds?” In his arms he held an overstuffed box of paperbacks. In his eyes was nothing but proud adoration, thankful to each god in the universe that Eddie had finally made his grand escape.

“It feels like I’ll never be financially stable,” Eddie remarked, watching with distaste as dust particles floated around the room, illuminated by the afternoon sunlight seeping through dingy windows. He stood with his arms crossed, his brow furrowed, making a mental to-do list of all the cleaning he would have to do once his next paycheck came in and he could buy cleaning supplies.

For a moment, Richie saw the Eddie he fell in love with. The scrawny, anxiety-riddled little kid with two fanny packs, the kid with too much love in his heart, the kid who broke his arm in Neibolt so many years ago. The kid who, with all the resolve in the world, scribbled out the _S_ on his cast to better suit who he was. His heart ached.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._ He hoped Eddie could hear the way his heart pounded each word. Instead of speaking the words, he swallowed them, and said them a little differently.

“You’ll be fine, Eddie Spaghetti, just look at me.” He beamed, flashing braces-straightened teeth. “Been alone for three whole semesters now and I’m only $15,000 in debt.”

Eddie rolled his eyes before walking over to take the box from Richie’s arms. “Are they charging you for never shutting up now?”

Richie grinned. “Yeah, they're charging me a dollar for every time I talk about fucking your mom.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ how you got chlamydia!”

“Take your stupid books, dweeb.” Richie passed the box into Eddie’s grip, his smile never fading. “That’s, like, the millionth box. Good thing I’m fucking ripped.”

Eddie couldn’t decide if he wanted to shove him through the doorway or kiss him.

“Just because I can read doesn’t make me a dweeb,” he teased, walking to the bedroom. He set the box down on the floor with the others, only now realizing how many books he really had. Maybe he was a dweeb.

“Yeah, yeah, Mr. English Major, keep flaunting your fluency.” Richie leaned against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. Eddie sat on the floor, ghosting his fingers over the spines of the novels. Richie’s heart ached once again.

“Oh, shit, I almost forgot,” he announced, rushing back outside to his car. Eddie looked up at the space where Richie used to be, blinking. When he returned with a rather large box, Eddie quirked an eyebrow.

“I got you a housewarming present, dumbass,” Richie explained, setting the plain cardboard box down next to Eddie. “Open it!” The excitement in his voice was already more of a gift to Eddie than whatever the box held.

Eddie used his house key to cut open the tape, which he could tell Richie had put on himself because of how messy it was. He gasped when he saw it.

“Richie, this is beautiful.” Inside was a record player, the smaller portable kind; it was Eddie’s favorite color, too, which he couldn’t remember ever telling Richie. This made it all the more perfect.

“I found it at a garage sale back in San Fran,” Richie explained. “Spent all semester fixing it up. Instead of, y’know. Studying electricity or whatever.” He watched Eddie take the record player out of the box, gingerly setting it down on the hardwood. “Look at the bottom,” he told him, unable to keep the excitement from his voice.

Eddie shot him a look of absolute, pure happiness. “Richie, oh my god!” He lifted the sleeved copy of David Bowie’s _The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars._ “Oh my god, Richie,” he repeated, his heart soft.

Eddie stood up, and before Richie knew what was happening, he was wrapped in a warm, tight embrace. Eddie smelled slightly of old books and the cologne he’d worn since junior year of high school, and Richie drank in the moment for everything it had. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

“Thank you,” Eddie mumbled, his voice muffled by the fabric of Richie’s shirt. The sentence was directed at more than just the gift. He swallowed and looked up at Richie. “I don’t think I’d be here without you, Richie.”

“Sure you would,” Richie replied, never wanting Eddie to leave exactly where he was; it would be an all too perfect world if he could hold him in his arms forever, just like this.

Eddie couldn’t take anymore of it. He was tired of the pining, of the thoughts that dug a hole in his heart night after night. “The first time didn’t count,” Eddie mumbled, his heart in his throat. “But I want this one to.”

And so, he looked up, and kissed Richie.

He didn’t know what to expect; half of him wanted Richie to tell him not to do it again, to agree to forget it ever happened. Another half, a stronger and more wishful part, knew Richie had been waiting just as long for this as Eddie had.

The latter won over. Richie placed his hand on the back of Eddie’s neck and kissed him again, enveloped in the way Eddie tasted, the way he felt, the perfection of the moment. The world could very well have been ending outside of this room and Richie wouldn’t have noticed. Everything, now, was Eddie, and his lips, and the way his lashes rested against his blushing cheeks.

Richie pressed Eddie closer to him, unable to get enough no matter how close they got. It was the pinnacle of everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d dreamt of. He didn’t want things to ever be the same after this moment.

And they weren’t.


	5. March 1996

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! i’m seeing chapter 2 tonight (perks of working at an amc). i won’t be home til 3:30 this morning, so tomorrow’s chapter may be a little late to get posted but i’m trying to get it out before the premiere! thank you all so much for sticking with me this far.

White-hot anger coursed through Eddie’s veins, pricking at the backs of his eyes and making his tongue feel to big for his throat. Everything was glossy and red to him; it wasn’t until he felt the shaking in his hands that he realized his fists were clenched tightly, his nails digging crescent shapes into his palms.

A girl sat on Richie’s lap, throwing her dark hair over her shoulder and laughing all too loudly at something he had said. Richie was giving her a look that previously Eddie had never seen; it was want, and longing, but not in the way he looked at Eddie. He wanted to imagine himself in her place.

His stomach twisted; his lip had been pulled between his teeth, and his breathing was short and shallow. If Eddie hadn’t known any better, he would have called it an anxiety attack. But this was different. This was jealousy, this was rage, this was his realization that he should have acted on what he had felt all those years ago.

Instead of speaking, he leaned against the wall behind him, the party going on all around him as his world shattered into pieces too small to pick up. Music blasted so loudly he could feel the bass thumping in his chest. Maybe it was just his heart breaking.

Sensing something was off, Richie looked away from the girl. He was drunk, possibly a little too much so, but he could still feel that invisible, intangible lifeline he had to Eddie. He said something to the brunette and stood, glass in hand. He walked over to Eddie.

“Eddie, what’s wrong?” he slurred, trying his best to form a coherent sentence.

Today was March 7, 1996, Richie’s 21st birthday. Eddie had flown out to UCSF to come see him, and caught himself in the middle of the biggest party he had ever been to. The anxiety had melted away with the ice in his glass, but an entirely new, and entirely unwanted, feeling had replaced it.

Eddie shook his head at the question. He didn’t want to say what was on his mind; the idea was embarrassing enough. He couldn’t imagine how mortifying it would be to speak it aloud now.

“Nothing.” His voice did not match the clipped sentence. “Nothing’s _wrong_, Richie, just go back to your makeout session.”

Richie studied Eddie’s face for a moment, the alcohol clouding his ability to read his expression. He wasn’t stupid, though; the words were enough to clue him in. He took Eddie’s hand and pulled him aside, into one of the bedrooms. The frat houses of UCSF may have gotten a bad reputation, but in the moment Richie was just thankful they weren’t shoved inside his tiny dorm room with its paper-thin walls. He shut the door behind them and looked Eddie in the eyes.

“Talk to me.”

The statement was simple. Richie said it with such conviction that it caused the first of many tears to roll down Eddie’s cheeks. He wished so badly that he wasn’t an emotional drunk. The words poured out faster than he could think them, his usually quick speech exaggerated now.

“I- I saw you with that girl and I wanted it to be me,” he half-sobbed, sniffling. “I got so jealous, Richie, and it made me so mad. It made me sick. I know you’re allowed to do whatever the hell you want but I want you, I’ve wanted you for so long that it aches right fucking here” — he pointed at his chest — “and it doesn’t ever fucking go away, Richie, not even when you’re gone.” He choked on a sob, burying his face in his hands.

Richie didn’t know what to say. The whole ordeal had sobered him a little too well, but now he was stuck with a pounding in his head and a breaking heart. “Eddie…” he began, his voice quiet. He turned around to make sure the door was completely closed, and he held Eddie in his arms.

“God, Eds, you’re an idiot,” Richie told him, his voice all soft tenderness and love. “Look at me.”

Eddie obeyed, his dark eyes tinged with red. Richie wiped his tears with the back of his hand. Eddie sniffled again.

“Has it taken you this long to realize that I love you?”

The question knocked the breath out of Eddie. “What?”

“I fucking love you, Eddie,” Richie repeated, his own eyes filling with tears. “I have since we were thirteen years old. I carved our stupid initials on that goddamn bridge back home the day that I realized I loved you. I haven’t stopped.”

“Richie, I —“ Whatever Eddie was about to say was cut off by the kiss Richie left on his lips. It was the first time Richie had ever kissed him first. It would not be the last. Eddie melted gratefully against Richie’s body, wanting nothing more than he wanted to stay just like this forever. Richie was home to him more than Derry ever was, more than his little apartment.

“I love you,” Richie promised in between kisses. They were sloppy and needy and so full of love that Eddie forgot how to breathe for the moment. “I love you, Eddie Kaspbrak, I love you.”

Eddie’s hand snaked up to tangle in Richie’s shaggy hair. He hadn’t gotten it cut since he started college, and Eddie would never admit it, but he loved the way it looked on him.

“I love you,” Eddie replied, tears once again streaming down his face. Richie was in a similar state, his eyes bloodshot and his heart full. He had finally said it, after all these years.

This would be the night Eddie Kaspbrak’s heart would break for all the right reasons, and the night Richie Tozier realized he had nothing to worry about.


	6. May 1997

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter!! it’s been way too long since i finished a fic. thank you all so much for following this fic and giving me your feedback. it really means a lot <3. i hope everyone who’s gotten to see chapter 2 by now liked it as much as it did :)

Long distance had proven itself to be a bitch.

_Just for a year_, Eddie had told himself as he penned letters and made cross-country phone calls four times a week.

Eddie, for the first time since Richie’s fateful 21st birthday, was back in San Francisco. He had rented out a place to stay in the heart of the city; he and Richie planned something of a vacation for themselves in congratulations: in observance of Richie’s graduation from college and of Eddie’s newfound place in life. Richie, naturally, stayed with Eddie, in a tiny hotel room with one bed. Neither of them minded.

Eddie had found that he slept much easier wrapped in Richie’s arms, despite Richie’s tendencies to splay out like a starfish at inopportune times of the night. They still bickered like they did as kids, over things like who stole the covers and whose fault it was that the other had woken up on the floor.

It was 7am, the morning of graduation. Eddie had been up since five, more excited for today than Richie himself was, flitting around the hotel room and getting everything ready.

When the sun rose, Eddie kissed Richie awake, who groaned a soft “fuck off” at the sentiment. “Watch your mouth or I’ll kiss you again,” Eddie replied, the love he felt making itself no secret on his expression.

“Guess that’d be a fate worse than death,” Richie sighed, sitting up and pushing his messy dark hair from his face. “Jesus, Eds, what time is it?”

Eddie thought to himself how different Richie looked without his glasses, how grown he looked with the slightest shadow of stubble on his face. The freckles on his cheeks had faded with age, but the California summer sun promised to bring them back to life. He was tanner than he had ever been back in Derry; it looked good on him.

“Hurry up and get dressed,” Eddie told him, “I wanna see the ocean.”

He was 22 and had never seen the ocean in his life. He, of course, had been to lakes and quarries, but the ocean was different. He couldn’t explain why. He thought it may have had something to do with the idea that on the other side of it, life was completely different. People spoke different languages, they had different cultures and customs, they fell in love differently, they had different names. It was all very beautiful and very overwhelming to think about.

“I swear to god if you ever wake me up this early again I’m gonna-“

“Gonna _what_?” Eddie taunted, fixing his hair in the mirror on the wall. Richie huffed.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin the element of surprise,” he concluded. Eddie rolled his eyes at his reflection. Richie rolled out of bed.

After an hour of smartass jokes at each other’s expense, they were hailing a cab. Eddie’s little body vibrated with excitement. Richie, out of habit and as a source of comfort, placed a gentle hand on Eddie’s knee. They’d learned the hard way not to strike up a conversation with the driver, and the rest of the ride was silent.

The beach, from where the cab driver had let them off, was nothing but a thin line on the horizon. Eddie nearly couldn’t contain himself. “Richie, look!” He pointed, eyes bright and full of joy. Richie’s heart swelled just a little bit. They walked on, hand in hand.

“You’ve really never seen the ocean?” Richie asked, and Eddie shook his head. Richie felt a weird sense of pride at being the first one to take him to the shore.

The beach wasn’t crowded yet, with only the surfers and the overly-concerned fitness nuts out at this hour on a Tuesday. Eddie ran immediately to the shoreline, taking off his shoes right before the waves crashed against the land. He laughed, looking back to Richie as he followed behind him.

They sat together on the shoreline for a while, Eddie with his knees pulled up to his chest and Richie with his arm around Eddie. It was cloudy, and they could just make out the silhouettes of sailboats on the horizon.

“You’re graduating today,” Eddie said, leaning his head against Richie’s shoulder.

“Don’t remind me,” Richie said in reply. Secretly, though, he felt an immense sense of accomplishment. Eddie being there only exaggerated the feeling.

“I get to tell people that my boyfriend is an engineer.” Richie laughed softly at this, looking out at the waves. Eddie had that look of lovestruck euphoria on his face that hadn’t seemed to leave in the last few months. He was so proud of everything Richie had become; they’d seen everything together, and it only seemed fair to be together for this, too.

“What’s so special about that?” There was amusement in his tone.

“That you’re my boyfriend.” Blush rose in Eddie’s cheeks. It still felt a bit unreal that this had finally happened, that he was living what had previously been only half-formed, embarrassed daydreams.

Richie’s heart stuck in his throat. The word felt a little juvenile, a little underperforming for what they were to each other. It didn’t seem right that “boyfriend” should be used as a descriptor for two people who experienced what they had. But they belonged to each other all the same.

“Good thing you’re not dead set on having an engineer for a boyfriend, then,” Richie laughed. Eddie gave him a confused look.

“I got an offer to start doing stand-up at some comedy club. It’s a coffeehouse, the same place George Carlin did his stuff,” Richie explained, childlike excitement bubbling into his voice. Eddie’s eyes grew wide.

“Richie, that’s incredible!” he gushed, turning to face him and taking his hands. “You’re gonna be famous and get a star on the Hollywood Walk and-and-“

Richie rolled his eyes. “You’re kinda cute when you’re excited.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me, Kaspbrak.”

And Eddie did. He pressed a deep, soft kiss to Richie’s lips, tangling his fingers in Richie’s messy hair. Between the briny ocean air, the breeze that just barely filled the space between them, and Richie’s lips, it all felt a little too good to be true.

“I love you.”


End file.
